


Begin Again

by FireSoul



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: AO3 suggested tags haven't changed Tomaz to Tarazi, Family Feels, Multi, Siblings, Sort Of, season 5 speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:00:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22530607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireSoul/pseuds/FireSoul
Summary: After learning about the now erased timeline and who Zari used to be, Behrad is excited that maybe there is hope for his sister. Zari, on the other hand, has her own view on the subject.Poor Nate is just waiting for his shovel talk.
Relationships: Behrad Tomaz & Zari Tomaz, Nate Heywood/Zari Tomaz (Minor)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 56





	Begin Again

Behrad likes to think of the weirdness that comes with being a Legend as an integral part of the adventure. Alternate timelines and magical creatures? It’s all part of the reason he signed up. The other part at the time was, you know, if he didn’t Kuasa probably would’ve killed him within a week but he definitely stayed for the adventure.

Sure, he knows alternate timelines can get messy. He’s seen Stein accidently create a daughter, Amaya debate the pros and cons of leaving the ship, and Ray vanish before his eyes because of a lost alien baby. So up until this morning he would’ve said yes if asked if he’s ever been personally affected by a changing timeline, of course he has.

Now he knows that would’ve been a lie.

He takes a deep breath as he rounds the corner into the engine room. He had checked his room for her, and then even Nate’s, and then Charlie’s, but Zari wasn’t any of those places. But she is here, in the hideaway he likes to claim as his own whenever he wants to be alone. He hasn’t mentioned that to her.

She looks up as he approaches, her eyes drawn first to his face and so he gives her a tight grin, and then she looks down to the dab pen in his hand.

“Wanna hit?” He offers, holding the pen out to her.

She smiles, small and humoring, and takes the pen and twirls it around in her fingers before she looks back up at him.

“You know, I don’t think a timeline has ever existed where you haven’t been a stoner.”

He chuckles, and as she takes her hit he ducks his head under the overhanging pipe and sits down next to her. She passes the pen back to him as she breathes out a short cloud of vapor, and he smiles to himself. They’ve never done this before. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure coming in here if she smokes, even if this isn’t technically smoking. He’d taken a gamble, and he’s glad he did; this is nice.

He takes a hit himself and sits back, as much as he can against the pipes running behind them anyway. She keeps her focus on the ground as he blows out a much longer stream. Maybe she only took the hit for the purpose of humoring him, which wouldn’t bother him. In fact it might even be considered a step in the right direction; she’s never humored him before.

“So.” He says, tapping his hands on his legs. “What I got from all that is in the old timeline, you were me.”

She hums, “Minus being stoned as often as Rory is drunk.” She amends for him, “And prettier.”

He laughs, and there’s a teasing little twinkle in her eye he doesn’t think he’s seen in a long time.

“I’ll accept the first one, not my fault you don’t know how to unwind in any reality. But the second? We both know I’m the pretty one.”

She laughs as he raises his eyebrows at her and so dose he, trying to drink all of this moment in. He hasn’t seen Zari like this in a very long time. Off her phone and actually giving him the time of day, living in the real world rather than in her head in “Zari Land” as he’s come to call it over the years. It’s nice.

“You know,” He says, “I know the whole ‘alternate timeline’ is a lot to take in, but it’s kind of cool when you think about it. I mean there was a version of history where you were a Legend. Isn’t that cool?”

She chuckles, ducking her head and moving a piece of hair behind her ear. He grins as he watches her. Yes, his eyes are seeing the perfect manicure of her nails push back black hair that’s interrupted with golden highlights, but his mind is picturing the alternate Zari he’s been shown. A Zari who never messed with the hair their mother always said was so beautiful, who kept her fingernails short and didn’t mind much if they were a little dirty from working in this room. A Zari who wore loose flannels as more than pajamas.

A Zari, he thinks, he would’ve gotten along with.

“I guess.” She admits, “I can definitely see the appeal of this place, traveling through time and saving the world and all.”

“Yeah.” He chuckles, “It’s pretty great.”

And suddenly an idea comes to his mind.

Well, maybe not suddenly. It’s been in the back of his mind since they found out about the old timeline. But now it’s at the forefront, because this is going well and maybe it isn’t so crazy.

“You know…” He trails, “Now that you know about who you used to be, you could stay. Be a Legend again.”

She scoffs, but it’s more with amusement than dismissal, and he’ll take that.

“What?” She asks, “This me couldn’t be a Legend?”

He doesn’t miss the challenging dip in her voice, the dare for him to be honest.

“No…” He trails, and he isn’t sure if he’s saying no she couldn’t, or no he didn’t mean that. “Come on Zari, up until now you’ve had different priorities than-”

“Different priorities?” She interrupts, and he freezes with his mouth still open with his next words. “What, you mean like rent?”

“Not exactly.” He huffs, willing the anger to stay out of his voice.

“And who says my ‘priorities’ changed because of a dead timeline?” She interjects, “I’m still me.”

“But the you in that timeline was a hero.” He tries to reason, also trying to get this conversation back on track. “Don’t you want to be that person again?”

She opens her mouth but says nothing. He keeps quiet as well, and tries to think of what he can say next.

“No.” She eventually says with a shake of her head, “No, I don’t.”

He smiles, but there is no joy in it. It’s a smile of shock, of anger, when his face doesn’t know what else to do.

“Unbelievable.” He mutters as he stands up. “Unbelievable. All the good you did as a Legend. You don’t want to be that.”

“Of course I do.” She argues, standing up herself.

“You just said you didn’t!” He reminds her, and he rounds on her as he does. “I just asked you-”

“What you asked me is if I would rather be the person I was in that timeline-”

“You mean someone who cares about more than views and likes?” He all but shouts, “Someone who cares about other people?”

“I am not having this conversation.” She grumbles, and she turns and starts to march away, but now he is seeing red.

“Fine!” He shouts after her, “Run away, back to Zari land where nobody else matters!”

He’s said that to her in the heat of plenty of arguments before, and she has always stomped off to not care somewhere else. But this time is different. This time she stops.

And she turns back, with a look in her eye of “you’ve fucked up” that he has only ever before seen on Papa.

“You want to talk about nobody else matters?” She asks, and she takes one step back towards him. “Listen to yourself.” She near pleads, continuing closer. “You are seriously mad that I wouldn’t trade this life for that one, and why? Because you liked the outcome better?”

It feels like a rock has settled in his chest all of a sudden, and with another step back to him she drives it in deeper.

“Were you not paying any attention to those memories?” She demands, “You _died._ Mama and Papa died. That me, that was a person who lived running from soldiers. That was a world where meta humans were hunted and killed. Where we were told praying was radical and rebellious, and it was outlawed. That me almost suffocated an entire village because I was so angry!”

Her breath hitches, and he can’t remember the last time – if ever – he saw Zari cry, but it’s threatening to be now.

She takes a minute to compose herself, to wipe her eyes and cross her arms in front of her.

“Do you really wish I’d gone through all that?” She asks, and he wants to scream _No._

He wants to cry himself, to tell her he’s sorry and he never meant it like that.

“I just… I just want my sister back.”

She holds his gaze at first, and opens her mouth like she is going to say something, but instead all she does is turn back and walk away.

* * *

He beats himself up over it for a little over an hour, during which time there are thankfully no disasters. He doesn’t see her in that time, and a part of him wonders where she’s gone. She’s been staying in his room since she got here but she isn’t there when he goes, and she doesn’t come, and when he goes to Nate’s room she isn’t there either.

But, thankfully, Nate is.

He gives a small grin when his buddy looks at him with an almost fear in his eyes, like he has been waiting for him to come in here with a shovel for daring to go after his sister in an alternate timeline.

“Can we talk?” He asks, and Nate gapes at him for a few seconds before he finally starts to shake off the apparent surprise of the question.

“Uh… Sure. Sure.”

Behrad grins and goes and sits at the foot of Nate’s bed. Nate joins him soon after, though neither of them speak right away.

“You…” Behrad finally starts when he thinks he has organized enough of his thoughts. “Would you… If she could just… turn back, into the person she was in the dead timeline, would you want Zari back? The version you knew?”

Nate looks more than a little taken back by the question, and Behrad stays silent while he thinks.

“You know, I don’t think so.” He eventually says, “I mean, I don’t know her as well in this timeline, but I don’t think she’s any different. She’s lived different things, she’s done different things, she’s made different choices. But at the end of the day I think Zari is still Zari.”

He tries to hear that, he really does, but ultimately Behrad still finds himself rolling his eyes.

“Yeah well, I don’t think the Zari who sacrificed herself for the good of the timeline is the same Zari who freaks out when she gets less views than the college roommate she didn’t even like.”

“Except she didn’t sacrifice herself for the timeline.”

Behrad looks at his friend, about to insist that he has it wrong, but there is something about the puzzled expression on Nate’s face that keeps him quiet.

“She was on the ship.” He says; his face still scrunched up as he sorts through the information Gideon gave to them earlier, until he finally nods with confidence. “She was on the ship so that she would be safe from the changes, at least enough so that whatever happened she would still be a Legend. But then I died, and she came after me.”

Right.

That is what Gideon said.

“Ok, but that proves my point even more.” He says, “That Zari risked her own life even when she wasn’t sure if she could save yours, but she had to take the chance. This Zari? She spent my entire high school graduation posting it to Instagram.”

“Did you even come to mine?”

He and Nate both look up, and Zari is standing in the open door. She has small tear tracks running down her face, and for that Behrad can’t help but feeling just a little bit guilty.

Awkwardly, Nate gets up.

“I’ll uh… I’ll leave you guys alone.”

On his way out of the room Behrad isn’t blind to the silent exchange of… something, happening with his best friend and his sister. It’s short, and nothing more than an exchange of glances that puts a grateful smile on Zari’s face. He feels an obligatory surge of protectiveness flare up in his chest but he ignores it. He has actual problems to deal with here.

He waits for Nate to leave, and for Zari to turn her attention back to him.

“I was nine.” He says, and she nods.

“I know.”

She sighs, and she comes and lowers herself onto the edge of the mattress.

“You were nine, and your friend had tickets to a hockey game. My graduating class was only twenty-something kids and Mama and Papa felt bad making you miss it for an hour ceremony, so they said you could go.”

“So what?” He asks, “You’re mad a nine-year-old missed your graduation?”

“No.” She says, shifting so that she is sitting crisscross on the bed and looking directly at him. “I am trying to remind you that you were nine. Then I was off at school and you were ten, and by the time I got home you were a teenager, and you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“You didn’t want anything to do with me!”

“Because I was growing up, Behrad!” She nearly pleads with him, her face falling into her hands for a moment before she looks up again.

“I had no idea what I was doing with my life and I was trying to figure it out! Yeah, I took what I knew and I ran with it, and maybe I do get a little carried away sometimes. But I’m not seventeen anymore, and you are not the little kid who was always creeping in the background of my videos.”

He chuckles, a little, because he did have a reputation as a child for doing that. But more than that he supposes she does have a point. Really, they haven’t been a part of each other’s lives since before she left for college. Nine years is a big age gap, and besides, he can certainly understand now how hard it is to grow up.

He ran away on a time machine for crying out loud.

“Ok, so maybe my teenage angst played a part in my not having you around.” He admits, and she snorts a small laugh. He holds out a hand to her, which at first she only stares at.

“Try to be a little less ‘Zari Tarazi’ the influencer, and I’ll try to be a little less of a jerk?”

She bites her lip, a playful look of consideration on her face before she finally accepts his hand.

“Deal.”

He smiles as he shakes her hand, and then that smile turns into a wicked grin.

“One thing you’re gonna have to get used to if you’re planning to hang around.” He warns, and she raises a curious eyebrow.

“What’s that?”

He feels his grin go from wicked to downright evil.

“Legends are huggers.”

She squeals out a very un-coherent protest as he leans forward and yanks her into what is without a doubt the least awkward - and most toppling involved – hug they have ever shared.


End file.
